The happiness of your life depends on your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly and take care you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature
Marcus Aurelius
This past summer, I made the decision to resume maintaining a daily journal. I committed to updating it every day, if only to say that the old broad who lives down the street blew the stop sign again or that I was too hungover to flirt with the red-headed Kroger cashier who eye-balled me. I have tried to keep a journal off and on since high school, but I have never regularly updated one. For some reason, I found it tedious, boring, and was too paranoid about somebody finding it. Those are all poor reasons not to have a journal.
The benefits from regularly maintaining a journal are enormous. You have a blank slate before you, into which you can pour out whatever you think or feel. You have a reliable outlet that you can count on after a particularly rough or confusing day. It becomes an excellent way of codifying your thoughts and processing your feelings. Instead of thinking something through, only to forget all or most of what you realized, you have writings you can come back at a later date.
Most importantly, if you commit to maintaining one, it forces you to commit to bettering your life. When you regularly have to report to your personal log about what you have done the past day or week, it forces you to either reconsider your goals or forces you to get busy working on them. For example, let’s say you scribble about your relations with your coworkers. You might note that you have certain behaviors or common reactions that either are not healthy, or cast yourself in a not-so-pleasant light. By detailing these interactions, you can evaluate what you are doing wrong and how to go about correcting said actions. You might leave a note to reread a certain chapter of How To Win Friends And Influence People; you might simply force yourself to think before you speak.
Further, a journal becomes a private confessional of sorts. It might be an inanimate object, but it becomes an extension of the self as you end up pouring what are the necessarily private contents of your mind. As such, it isn’t a confessional in the purest sense of the word, but rather a kind-of tribunal in which you judge and evaluate yourself. At times, a blank page might look like an accusation, blindly staring back at you asking you, What are you waiting for? Judging yourself harshly is never good, but a healthy sense of distance from yourself is necessary to properly adduce your path forward.
Before I list a few benefits of journal-keeping, I highly recommend that you have at least one or two people you feel comfortable with discussing some what you write about in your journal. A key problem with the modern man is we all too often think that we have to be perfect, have it together all the time and never let our guard down.
Wearing your heart on your sleeve is a sucker’s bet, but having one or two confidants—not your girlfriend or wife, please!—that you can be completely honest with is a great boon. You might have some great insight into yourself and that other person can let you know that you are running up the wrong flagpole or that you might be onto something substantive. If nothing else, it helps alleviate some of that toxic shame that many modern men feel about being a man.
Here are some benefits I’ve noticed from keeping a daily personal journal:
It Betters Your Writing And Speaking Skills
Just by forcing yourself to write every day, you become a better writer simply by having to compose prose pleasing to you. Even if you only pen 500 words a day, that is enough to slowly hone your writing chops. Since you are only writing for yourself, you are freed from writing for an audience. You can get a good read on your ability to narrate events or muse about life and love. This bleeds into your ability to converse, as you expand your vocabulary as your writing skills increase. While reading does help more in this aspect, writing helps you find your own voice, which can translate into your actual voice.
Another point to consider is this: one of the first things you notice once you have a few weeks under your belt is that re-reading old posts can be a bit taxing. Personally, I have terrible penmanship, so I cleaned that up quickly (as a side note, I don’t trust a personal log on a computer, as I think we associate electronic writing with communicating with others, as all of us have hand-written letters or notes to ourselves). You notice certain tendencies you have writing. I have a two bad habits: dropping words and confusing verb tenses. Part of this is very mild dyslexia, but I committed to bettering my prose for myself.
This isn’t a bad goal, but it defeats the primary purpose of journal-keeping. For a period of time, I was obsessed with what I would think of this entry a month later. Don’t do that. It prevented the free-flowing of thoughts and feelings. Let it all out. If you drop words or confuse verbs, who cares? The only audience is yourself. Writing and keeping at writing will improve your writing, but that is a side-effect of journal keeping really does for a man.
It Builds Confidence
Journal keeping builds confidence because it forces you to work towards goals. I have a problem with over-thinking issues and while I might have good realizations or workable solutions, they are just thoughts. By writing them down, it gives them more substance, as instead of merely thinking of doing something, it has a physical representation on a page.
There is a reason the Roosh Program has a strong emphasis on keeping a player journal: the reflection it causes doesn’t just help you sort out your thoughts, but it also gives you an outlet to reflect on and better yourself. Confidence—in my estimation—stems from having not just having a strong social network, but having both a reservoir of positive memories to draw on and the ability to honestly and accurately appraise yourself. A key component of true confidence to be able to appraise onesself in a neutral light–neither too harshly nor too lightly—but in a way that reflects an awareness of the self.
It Helps Build Social Awareness
In law school, Bill Clinton would keep note cards on all his fellow classmates and professors. It was his way of keeping all the information he learned about others straight in his mind. He was able to build his personal charisma because he was able to remember seemingly insignificant details about others. He wowed other people because of his ability to make you feel like you knew each other intimately, even if your interactions had only been fleeting and superficial.
As such, what has struck about keeping a log about your personal life, is that you will spend a great bit of time detailing your interactions with others. This is a good thing. Not only will you work through your problems and issues with others, but you will also learn to transcend the self-absorption of the mind and spend more time considering others’ viewpoints and why they are the way they are.
It Keeps You On The Path Towards Your Goals
Some years back, I remember pulling off the interstate into a small town. Just inside the city limits was a billboard that read: If you are looking for a sign, this is it. No sponsored corporate or non-profit sign, just a no-name billboard that exhorted a person to get off their ass.
I recall thinking that was a pretty neat message, but like most messages in America, it is a fleeting message one most likely will not act on.
The problem for most people in America is that we love to talk about what we are going to do. Why do you think the gym fills with newbies the first two weeks after New Year’s Eve and goes back to normal later that month? We Americans love to talk about what we are going to do—or at least pretend to try for a couple weeks.
The problem with achieving goals or dreams is that it is necessarily a long journey. Christ, Americans wanted to liberate Iraq but within a year they were whining about occupying a foreign country. No wonder fat acceptance is gaining mainstream approval: it’s easier to demand other’s accept your inadequacies than confront them head-on.
Regardless, putting one foot in front of the other towards a goal is a daily struggle. Whether that is to open at least one female a day or to commit to at least working out 30 minutes a day, it can be tough to push forward with your goals. A journal can help because you always know you have a repository for whatever you might think or feel about your goals.
With a journal, you have written documentation of your struggles towards your goals. Since it is personal, it is only you evaluating your progress. As such, you only have to worry about your own valuation. While a man can be his harshest critic, a man can also appreciate the nuances of his own experience that others can’t.
When you push yourself to keep a daily journal, you force yourself to confront many things. You will learn to better your own writing, you will learn to better your social relations and use the confidence that flows from that. Yet, what is most important is that you have a literary log of where your life is going. Only a fool of a man will let himself write just about his failings; a healthy man will use his journal as a way to better himself and transcend the un-actualized aspects of his life.
Read More: America’s Culture Of Narcissism
Every man needs to also remember that 30 seconds of splooge can change your life forever. Don’t be one of those men that ends up writing about his regrets in life such as knocking some broad up and having a child he did not want.
Remember, women are terrorists. You must NEVER negotiate with a terrorist. No negotiations or compromises. No poon in the world is worth 18 years of child support.
This is good advice, but perhaps only if you’re careful to follow the advice, and maybe with some additional caveats. In some sense I would associate keeping a diary / journal more with being a teenage girl than with being a man, which is not the reason I sometimes keep a journal, but which sometimes makes me more aware of the process with a view to not doing it like your average teenage girl. Basically the rule is if you find yourself covering your lovely pink journal with little hearts and kisses then you’re probably doing it wrong. One obvious reason to keep a journal of some sorts however is to ‘express yourself’, which if you continue that sentence would probably be ‘to express your feelings”. There are dangers to expressing your feelings, in any form including the written, just as there are dangers to not expressing your feelings. Clearly you want to avoid emotionalism as a matter of style and discipline. I think the key is to use the distance that writing can provide you in a controlled and purposeful way, as 2wycked describes, ideally in a way that is goal-directed, and which were the information contained therein to fall into enemy hands would not cause you too much grief. Which is to say whether you’re a serial killer or just a regular decent guy think about the style and presentation of your writing just as you would the style or presentation of something shown to the world. That’s not because you should ever have to share private thoughts with the world, but because in a sense if your write, or for that matter even if you just think, you already are: you are sharing those thoughts / notes or whatever with yourself, and will feel better or worse, inspired or uninspired etc depending on how that presentation goes.
There are also very good ‘mental health / mental hygiene’ reasons for writing a journal or something like that (I think a blog is too public for the purposes described) and that relates to the distance that writing puts between you and your thoughts and emotions, which are ordinarily experience with greater immediacy, and consequently without the retroactive control that comes with penmanship. Writing in this way is a meta-cognitive activity, something that is for example involves ‘thinking about thinking’, reflecting on activities, and to the extent that it narratises your every day life, and the little and not so little ups and downs offers the opportunity to alchemically turn the bad shit into gold so to speak, or at least change the value to something manageable.
Its up to the individual how much he cares to reveal of himself – there’s nothing worse than endless and purposeless self-examination for the sake of it, but I would imagine the rule should be, whatever that is, do it strategically, same as with anything else. We may not all be capable of being a ‘man of letters’ but there’s no harm emulating the men who once made an art form of such activity. And anyway what’s the worst that could happen? That your little sister might steal your journal and make you cry?
Thank you for the note. You are spot on.
Thanks, its a really interesting topic
I’m not sure how I feel about this. To preface, no one can produce a valid argument against keeping a log to measure performance, unless you’re involved in some type of criminal activity, but bearing your soul in a “private confessional” (read: diary) day in and day out is not only decidedly effeminate but absolutely reckless since anyone who finds (and subsequently reads) your dairy (let’s call it what it is), now has the keys to the kingdom.
That said, I think the best thing we can all take away from 2Wycked’s piece is the following: If you need tangible metrics to measure performance, keep a log. For everything else, if you have to write it down, it’s not worth remembering.
that’s why it shouldn’t be baring your soul. Do you think all the best diarists simply bared their soul? If it comes across as effeminate then there’s something wrong. As for the activity itself, yeah, a bit . But how about calling it a ‘memoir’ instead of ‘dear diary?’
Agreed, but that idea, in and of Itself, defeats the purpose of a “private confessional” the author had suggested; As would a memoir. A memoir could work but memoir is only partially synonymous with a ‘diary’ as they tend to be a bit more contrived.
yes, as confessional its problematic. Confession is historically a means whereby the confessor controls the confessed (c.f.. Foucault on the church). If you are the confessor, no problem. If someone else, that could present security issues
There are a good number of apps out that are journal apps you can use on your smartphone or tablet. Many also have password protection. So if you lose your device (and assuming your device is pw protected, thus adding an additional level of security) then it won’t be an issue, unless there is some vested interest from the local Stazi.
I up-voted this because it was at least a suggestion but if ‘The Fappening’ has taught us anything, it’s that the internet is not secure. Not your email, not your webcam, not your mobile device; Nothing. Unless your electronic devices are completely disconnected from the net, there is no guarantee of privacy.
Good point Helmut. The thing to keep in mind is: to what extent will any authority want to bother with your journal? A famous celeb or politician or prominent businessman will have much further interest from a hack than the average joe.
That plus I would consider wording the journal entries s certain way so only you can understand them.
if one is not famous or rich, essentially the more hurdles a hack has to jump through the more said hack gets discouraged.
I can agree with all of this. A man of means would be a fool to keep a journal. The worst an average joe has to worry about is a girlfriend and honestly, that may not be such a bad thing.
When I was younger, I kept a journal that read like “Dennis Reynolds: An Erotic Life” My girlfriend at the time found it and cried for days. I have to be honest…the whole thing was hilarious to me.
P.S. We dated until I eventually dumped her.
i keep a personal journal pretty regularly, in a password-protected word document. what you say about it not being entirely secure is true, but i live a sincere life with nothing really to hide. i’m secure enough in my awesomeness that, were my inner thoughts and memorable experiences to somehow be compromised and released to the public, there’s really not much in there that i wouldn’t be proud of.
in conclusion, i highly recommend keeping a journal.
indeed if I were to keep a journal the internet is the last place I would put it.
Good God have we all gone stupid?
How do you figure?
“A man of means would be a fool to keep a journal.”
Actually that’s interesting. I remember reading somewhere about how the super elite make sure that nothing they do or say is written down. That way there is no comeback. I can’t remember who the people concerned was. No doubt a good strategy re. finances. Also in management I tended naively to record everything in emails etc (in a slightly ocd manner) but noted how the senior bosses were incredibly careful about responding to anything that could be remotely incriminating. The big cheeses are always looking ahead.
you could forget and leave the document open. i imagine you could use a rainbow table to crack a word document password too.
Are you kidding? Journaling is anything but effeminate. Greater men than all of us combined, both past and present, have used and still use writing and journaling for introspection and growth. They have used it to live the kinds of lives that all men must strive to live.
An inherently alpha characteristic is expressing and living one’s truth as best he can and to become better at living his truth on a daily basis (aka integrity). It requires one to live a congruent lifestyle both in thought and action and be able to express it free of fear of what other’s might think (investing himself more in the opinions of others; a low status characteristic). Someone finding a man’s journal and using its contents against him and holding him hostage with the “keys to the kingdom” would not deter a man of character, integrity, congruence, and courage. Also, a man that would surround himself with someone who would blackmail him in such a way would need to seriously evaluate himself and keep in check as to with whom he surrounds himself.
Your response, coupled with the fact that you yourself keep a journal, makes me question your neutrality. Either way, I disagree with essentially everything you said but I’ll point out the key discrepancies:
Agreed but what did this have to do with anything I said?
For the sake of context, would you mind naming a few great and masculine diarists?
I take it you’ve never read Niccolò Machiavelli’s ‘The Prince’?
Being surrounded by those who pray for your downfall is no reflection of a man’s character. I’d propose that in our current cultural paradigm, having enemies on all sides is a sign that you’re doing something right. I think Paul Newman said it best “A man with no enemies is a man with no character.”
@doktorjeep:disqus’s earlier comment addresses this and recalls what you mentioned earlier regarding “Greater men than all of us combined…”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diarists I’m sure you can find a few masculine men in there. Also, a diary and a journal are quite different. A diary is literally just a catalog of what one does day-to-day; a recount of actions. A journal is a reflection of feelings and thoughts; it prompts introspection. Not so sure how or why you would want to argue against that as a means of personal growth or understanding. Your mention of keeping a journal being effeminate is almost like you’re going overboard with the whole masculine-alpha mentality to the point where you close your mind and dismiss things of great value because you are skeptical of whether or not they are masculine enough to consider.
You’re not gaining any credibility with such responses. The fact of the matter is that men are the logical sex and are quite capable of introspection w/o writing our “feelings and thoughts” in a diary. Some men have more feelings than others and thus, require written introspection but most don’t.
Further, for the record: There was a point in my life when I kept a number of diaries…when I was a boy. Once I became a man, I put away childish things.
Lastly, if you have a point, make it like a man. Don’t personally attack the author of the argument, like that other gender. Is my logic faulty? Prove it, logically. Don’t paste a link and follow it with “I’m sure you can find a few masculine men in there,” Pick out several masculine men to help substantiate your point, then bring it full circle.
“For the sake of context, would you mind naming a few great and masculine diarists?”
Thomas Carlyle and Henry Crabb Robinson. I have no journal, and no interest in keeping one; but I think these count as “masculine”.
I have to agree. The world probably bears the brunt of too many journals by mediocre people. A journal is only good for situations of significance. If a war broke out, or some major event occurred, then a journal would be invaluable for the future. The same would be said for scientists and explorers.
But for Joe Sixpack who gives a fuck?
Why waste paper and ink on the kind of people living the kind of lives that are merely fodder for the Reaper? Will archaeologists in a couple thousand years really care beyond “so this is why that civilization collapsed”?
In a way, you could argue that it helps you understand and therefore control the way you live. You’re doing this for you, not for social approval, and ideally you’d never show it to anyone. You’re not a woman.
I regularly “journal” on a piece of paper and then promptly throw out the paper. Once every three or four weeks seems about right; daily is ridiculous. The point is not to create a log or record, or anything for others to read. The point is to reify and consciously articulate subconscious thoughts and feelings, so they can be deliberately addressed and decisions can be made. You can spend months or years sensing serious problems at a subconscious level, but without forcing your conscious mind to precisely articulate the issues in clear language the issues can fester. A lot of health problems flow from unaddressed subconscious tension.
List out exactly and specifically the things that are bugging you and write out what you need to do about them. If nothing can be done about a particular problem, or you’re having baseless emotional reactions to things, write that out and consciously tell your mind to knock it off with the pointless worrying. Write out what pursuits and people are making you feel good and resolve how to nurture those activities and relationships.
Your subconscious mind is really good at noticing when things are not going right, but in the modern world it’s lousy at deciding what needs to be done. Writing forces into action the higher brain decision making parts.
“Will archaeologists in a couple thousand years really care beyond “so this is why that civilization collapsed”?”
they will be archeologybots with access to infinite processing power. Joe sixpack will provide important data. It will go one of two ways. All the mediocre shit we write will perish down the line (quite possibly within a few years until disk on a server somewhere is wiped) or it will be recorded, and data-mined in ways we can’t even imagine. I imagine the latter.
Keeping diary is for women as it captures momentary feelings and emotions. You will be ashamed and embarrassed with yourself when you read those pages back.
Memoirs, on the other hand, are different because their are written in retrospective and the life events are given the necessary time to mature in our minds.
“it captures momentary feelings and emotions” yes, but it can also be used to distance yourself from such things – dwelling on emotions may be disastrous, but this debates a bit like the issue of say meditation which some people say is girly, while others see as a way of liberating yourself of precisely the control feelings or even pain might have over you. Its a question of how its done. There is also no reason why a journal could not be use for reflection regarding professional or subject-related thoughts – i.e. without any kind of feelings or emotions being recorded at all
Keeping a log is always useful for any matter but I gather the author talks about a personal diary where you express your secret thoughts and emotions as he mentions the possibility of somebody finding it and reading it.
yes, secret thoughts shouldn’t find their way on to paper, unless there’s a very good reason.
My comments are a form of daily journal. I am going to collect them into a 3-volume set and sell through Amazon.
any thoughts on jax teller’s + senior teller’s diary in sons of anarchy? the guy’s pretty alpha as far as I can tell
Knowing he is being cuckolded by one of his “brothers” but keeping his mouth shut? Nah.
Side piece in Ireland though… yeah that qualifies.
that’s true, there was a bit of a progressive vibe here – ‘old man’ teller got whacked because he wasn’t red pill enough, jax on the other hand walks the tightrope between his two fathers, arguably using the journal to negotiate that synthesis
The purpose of a journal is to learn from experience. It is only for you. There isn’t any benefit to writing it, only from looking back over it later. I’ve kept one for many years now, writing about my experiences, thoughts, and yes, sometimes feelings. You will laugh or shake your head at yourself later; the only people who don’t haven’t grown. I didn’t decide on a college major that I would eventually get my degree in until my junior year. Looking back at the thoughts I had written down over 2 years about why I wanted to major in this or that and what my plans were for after college helped me realize the errors in my thinking and make a better decision.
The contents determine whether it is masculine or feminine. The writer determines the contents.
Only write it on paper. Hide it or lock it up. You should know how to keep things secure. Treat it like you treat your guns.
Dear Diary,
Nah, I think I’ll pass.
My litle sister had one.
I remember sneaking in her room to read it, and burst out in laughters in front of this narcissistic drama crap.
“Dear Diary, I had my periods yesterday…”
“Dear Diary, I think I’m a lesbian…”
“Dear Diary, Hugo is my best friend. I want to keep it with me for ever…”
“Dear Diary, Hugo said to me he loved me. But I don’t want to risk our friendship…”
“Dear Diary, I met this handsome guy at a party. We kissed and he put his fingers in me…”
“Dear Diary, my mother is a bitch she doesn’t understand me…”
“Dear Diary, later I would like to be a singer or an actress”
“Dear Diary, yesterday I felt lonely and masturbated with my electronic toothbrush”
“Dear Diary, I think someones been reading my diary.”
“In law school, Bill Clinton would keep note cards on all his fellow classmates and professors. It was his way of keeping all the information he learned about others straight in his mind. He was able to build his personal charisma because he was able to remember seemingly insignificant details about others. He wowed other people because of his ability to make you feel like you knew each other intimately, even if your interactions had only been fleeting and superficial.”
And we’re supposed to admire and emulate this type of starfucking, ass-kissing, utterly insincere approach to life? No matter what you gain by doing this kind of shit, you’ve already lost. I’ll pass.
No thanks. I tried that once but decided I don’t want a record of all my mis-deeds for someone to find.
All my shit goes to the grave with me.
Why not, a few minutes a day to write my experiences. I’m game